Did you know it may be against the law for a company to call you on your cell phone without your permission to sell you a product or service or collect money? A federal law called the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (“TCPA”) prohibits companies from contacting people on their cell phones with an “automatic telephone dialing system,” or using “an artificial or prerecorded voice,” or by sending an unsolicited text message, without their prior express consent.
Violating the TCPA is a serious matter; the consumer can recover $500 to $1500 per communication.
A call is likely to have been placed using an automatic telephone dialing system if:
You answered the phone and there was a pause or delay before a live person began speaking
You answered the phone and heard “clicks” indicating that the call was transferred before you got a live person on the phone
You answered the phone to “hold music” or initially got a pre-recorded message that told you to hold for a live person
You get a call from the same number at exactly the same time every day